Turn the Page
by SpamWarrior
Summary: Hitcher fic, John/Grace. Bizarre as all hell, and will probably visit some unpleasant places and concepts along the way. Rating is for now due to language, but may encompass other things later on.
1. Running

Perpetrator's Note: This really is an inexcusable piece of crap, but I just couldn't help it. The remake of _The Hitcher_ was pretty bad, but there was some serious chemistry going on between John and Grace--which had to be more a natural thing between the actors than anything else, because the writing sure couldn't have had anything to do with it. (As a huge fan of the original, I will admit I was biased against the remake from the start, but even if I hadn't been it's…really not a good movie, yet at the same time it's curiously addictive. Sean Bean and Sophia Bush definitely help with that.) Anyway, this is the sort of crap that would be pardonable if I were ten years younger, but as it is I really ought to know better by now. Oh well--everyone's allowed to write crap once in a while. XD

That said, I do highly recommend the original, as it's one of the creepiest things I've ever seen, and, since Rutger Hauer is the scariest man on the face of the Earth, it winds up downright terrifying at times.

Also, though _Hitcher II _was atrocious, certain plot points have been worked into this fic, because if they weren't there wouldn't be a fic. XD (Also, writing someone as young as Grace has been cracking me the hell up. Srsly.)

And, just to make this author's note EVEN LONGER, the title is taken from the song Turn the Page, originally by Bob Seger and later covered by Metallica.

* * *

Summer, to put it bluntly, sucked.

Admittedly, autumn hadn't been stellar, and winter had been dark and cold and grey, but that had suited Grace's mood, really. Spring was offensive, though--all those trees, pretty and blooming and, to her, utterly jarring. And now summer again, a full year since It happened.

She always thought of it that way--It, with a capital I. There was before It, and there was after, and everything in both those times seemed to pale in comparison with the nightmare clarity of that one horrible day. _Those_ memories wouldn't fade, no matter how hard she tried to erase them, and how many fucking therapists she saw. All that was indelibly etched in her memory, and she knew damn well it would never, ever go away.

Naturally she hadn't gone back to college--no way in hell could she have handled that. She'd spent the last year living in her parents' basement, holed up like a hermit and, more often than not, doped to the gills. There was nothing like Valium to make the world nice and pink and harmless, and Grace had been eating it like candy for months.

Physically, she bore little resemblance to the girl who had so blithely set off with her boyfriend last spring break--she was too skinny now, her skin unhealthily pale and her eyes lost in bruise-black shadows. She looked, as one of her visiting friends had said, and whom she had overheard, 'like some kind of meth addict'; it was a cruel statement that her friend hadn't meant for her to hear, but it was also true enough. She'd gone from a pretty girl to something like a wraith, but that didn't really matter. Nothing did, when you got right down to it.

She'd also overheard her parents talking to one of her legion of therapists, not two weeks ago. The state of New Mexico had actually been paying all her medical bills--they held their law enforcement responsible for everything she'd gone through, and by some miracle had actually put their money where their mouth was. As a result, Grace had dealt with more counselors and therapists than she could count; she knew they meant well, but shit, it wasn't like they'd gone through it. It wasn't like any of them could _know_, could understand the guilt and numbness and the godawful nightmares. The numbness was both a blessing and a curse--she hadn't been lying when she'd told John she didn't feel anything. It was like a protective cocoon, a layer of cotton wool that shielded her brain from the world and everything in it.

Which made what her parents had said…worrying. Grace had only heard half the conversation, but from the sound of things they and one of the therapists were conspiring to actually send her out of the house--more than that, they wanted to send her back down south, back to the desert. What good in all fucking hell that would do, she had no idea; personally, once she'd pulled her life back together, she wanted to move to freaking Alaska--as far away from New Mexico as was practically possible. (Except then she'd be into _30 Days of Night _territory, and oh God she'd watched that movie with Jim, hadn't she? Everything came back to him and It and hey, she had more Valium. As Jim would have said, Score, dude.)

She was lying crosswise on her bed now, her feet propped up against the wall, hair--so stringy, now, uncared-for--pooling on the floor beneath her head. Everything was upside-down this way, different and the same all at once, flipped around like everything else seemed to be. She twisted a little, placing both her hands on the carpet--pale blue, the nap wooly and slightly coarse. It was strange, but the number she grew internally, the more sensitive her senses seemed to become; it was like there had to be a kind of balance, somehow.

_Maybe I could walk like this_, she said, picturing herself as a spider, scurrying into a corner. _See how long I could keep it up._

…Yeah, Grace was definitely a little high. High, and more than a little unstable, and suddenly entertaining ideas that she really shouldn't have. She blinked at the dark legs of her desk chair, thoughts floating through her head and ricocheting off each other like balloons in seemingly Brownian motion. Struggling, she sat up and tiptoed up the stairs, pausing at the door to listen. Her parents often talked in the kitchen while her mother made dinner, and had said all sorts of interesting things they hadn't wanted Grace to know about.

"I just don't know if it's a good idea," her mother said, the words accompanied by the brisk thunk of a knife hitting the breadboard, chopping some vegetable or other. "It's only been a year, Alan. She didn't just lose her boyfriend, she lost him in…well, it's horrific. She ought to go back someday, but I just think it's too soon."

A chair scraping, her father sitting heavily at the kitchen table. "They say she needs it," he said. "Something has to shake her up, or she's just going to stay like that. They said…Christ, what did they say?" He fell silent, groping through his memory. "They said she's internalizing everything, and the longer she does it the worse it'll all be when she snaps. It's not like she wouldn't be supervised, either--Janet and Philip both said they'd go with her."

Janet and Philip. Philip and Janet. Did she really want to spend time down there, with both of them? No. Definitely not. Like all the others, their intentions were good, but they'd just stand and look at the countryside or whatever and expect her to do…what? Cry? Scream? As John would say, did they want her to be a whiny little bitch? Probably. They'd talk about getting in touch with her _feelings_, about how it was okay to let go and let it all out. Yeah, because letting go had done her _so_ much good when It happened. Right.

Fuck that. Fuck that, and fuck all of them with their kind smiles and good intentions, fuck the look in their eyes that said quite clearly that they thought she was batshit insane. Yeah, she was cracked, and she _knew_ she was cracked, but none of those smiling professionals were going to be able to glue her back together again. Maybe nothing could. She didn't know, yet. If they wanted her to go, she'd go, but she'd damn well do it on her own terms.

* * *

Night. Grace didn't like the night, the dark--it reminded her too much of Jim, even now, reminded her of what had happened to him. It was the only time she'd be able to leave, though--if she tried to get out during the day, someone would stop her. They'd talk to her, break down her fragile resolve, try to _help_ again. No, it had to be night, and it had to be _this_ night, or she'd never have the guts to try again.

She still had a car--a little brown VW squareback, lacking in horsepower but definitely way ahead in terms of fuel consumption. It had been a while since she'd driven it, but it still had half a tank of gas, and could easily get more--all she had to do was stop along her way and clear out her savings account at an ATM, and she'd be set. She could go almost anywhere with that money.

Her luggage didn't amount to much, and only took two trips to load. Summer though it was, it was chilly, the grass cold against her sandaled feet, and she shivered as she shut the hatchback and climbed into the driver's seat. She'd left her parents a note, taken plenty of water and assorted snack food, and now had nothing to stop her hitting the road.

Nothing but the shakes. Part of why she hadn't driven in what seemed like ages was the effect that sitting in a car never failed to induce--whole-body shivers, rising from her feet all the way through the crown of her head, that could last anywhere from two minutes to a quarter of an hour. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, they'd called it, the same thing all those Vietnam vets had come back with. Fuck.

They only lasted maybe five minutes this time, and she guided the little car out into the silent, empty street, cruising toward…something. Freedom, maybe. Grace didn't know what, but just now she didn't care--for the first time in over a year, a kind of…of _peace_ descended on her, the peace that came with the avoidance of all thought. All she had to do was exist in the moment, pay attention to the road and the wind that blew in through the open windows. This was…

…going home.

It was a weird-ass thought, but it seemed so _right_--part of her had never left the hot and dusty highways of New Mexico, and in going back there she might be able to retrieve it. Maybe then this shit could stop, and she could actually find something like life again. Real life, not the doped-up, hazy limbo in which she'd spent the last year.

She turned on the radio, picking up some old rock station, and half an hour and two stops later she'd hit the highway, cruising the empty tarmac as fast as her little car would go. Some old-school Bonnie Tyler song was blaring--something about a total eclipse of the heart. Appropriate. Almost scarily so.

* * *

Grace drove until dawn, just in time to cross the border from Colorado to New Mexico. It was a different border--the northern, rather than eastern--but it had the same sign, the one welcoming everyone to the land of enchantment. She snorted--there was enchantment, all right, but it was the sort normally found in the darker brand of fairytale, the type where Grandmother actually gets eaten by the Big Bad Wolf.

Her parents would call her soon, she knew, panicking like hell. Right now, though, she needed sleep; what little explanation she had to offer could wait. Somehow, she doubted her parents would swallow an _I just have to go, okay?_ It wasn't _therapy _if she did it her way, and now she was--irony of ironies, thank you, Dad--_unsupervised._ Like she was some sort of child playing truant from school.

She hauled some of her luggage out, checked into a cheap hotel, and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

Her arrival had not gone unmarked. He couldn't see her yet, but he could _feel _her--had felt her as soon as she'd crossed the line, into his territory.

Little Grace was coming home.

* * *

Perpetrator's Note: Okay, so that canon from _Hitcher II_ I mentioned? That's connected to this. The upshot of it (since I really recommend you avoid the movie, as it's mind-destroyingly bad) is that Ryder is a kind of demon who reincarnates every time somebody kills him. As plot-twists go, it's just a little retarded, but convenient for me all the same. In my own personal idea of canon, it's like zombie-ism without the whole, you know, dead bit--also completely ridiculous and far-fetched, but then the movies themselves weren't exactly grounded in reality, so shhh. I just might get away with it.


	2. Not Quite the Hotel California

Perpetrator's Note: Two chapters in as many days--that's kind of a record for me. Yeah, it just gets more ridiculous and bizarre from here, but that's certainly not stopping me. XD Also, kudos to anyone who can catch the _Juno_ reference. To answer Quinn's question, he's still very much the John Ryder we all know and, er, love. XD

* * *

It was, naturally, the phone that woke her. Rather to Grace's surprise, though, it wasn't her parents calling, or any of the horde of therapists--she didn't know the number, which was…pretty weird, really. She didn't tend to get calls from anyone who wasn't in her address system, aside from the occasional wrong number.

Clawing the hair out of her eyes, she flipped the phone open and managed a bleary, "Hello?" Naturally, this being the middle of East Jesus, Nowhere, the phone dropped the call almost as soon as she'd spoken. She glared at it.

"Fuck you, too," she muttered, and staggered into the shower. Fifteen minutes of steam and five minutes of scrubbing her teeth later, Grace felt like something approaching human, and also like something that was starving. According to the clock she'd crashed out for over twelve hours--it was 7:30 now, which theoretically meant she'd miss the dinner rush at the Denny's just down the street. Why the hell they always put a Denny's near a hotel, she didn't now--it was probably some sort of food-conspiracy or something. A think-tank of not-quite-fast-food restaurants.

…Wow. Coming down off all the drugs was…interesting, wasn't it?

The diner wasn't as empty as she'd hoped--she made do with a counter-seat, ordering eggs and pancakes and coffee and trying not to wolf it all down. She garnered a few strange looks, but not too many--somehow, she looked less strung-out here, though the change was almost intangible. Already her bearing had changed, and her face had lost the unfortunate hunted look it had worn for months now; for the first time ages, all she had to do was exist _here _and _now_. Everything else could go fuck itself.

Which was just as well, considering she had no idea just what she was doing out here. It had started with those damn therapists, but none of their 'ideas' had ever budged her before--it was as though the urge to come back had always been dormant in her, locked up tight in her brain, and only now had it found its way out. All she really knew was that she was on her way to whatever place she was really supposed to be. What would happen then…well, that was the future, and right now even the future didn't matter.

So absorbed was she in her food that Grace didn't immediately notice that someone had taken the seat beside her. People who sat at the counter generally weren't interested in small talk anyway--they came in alone, they ate alone, and often had their heads buried in a newspaper or a book while doing so. She just continued chowing on her pancakes, until, somewhat belatedly, her senses actually managed to get her attention.

It was the smell. Not smell, _scent_; she'd been an English major, she had to make the distinction. Cotton and machine oil and dusty desert, the clean sharp aroma of ozone after a sudden thunderstorm. Sweet merciful Christ in a fucking sidecar, she _knew_ that scent, and she also knew that it belonged to a very, very dead man. Hell, she of all people knew how very dead he was--she'd blasted half his head away with a shotgun at nearly point-blank range.

Grace paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. Of course it was just her being paranoid, but still, she couldn't bring herself to look at her neighbor. She'd had little flashes like this before, though nothing nearly so strong, and they always passed sooner or later. Janet had said they weren't a bad sign--it was simply her brain trying to process something inhumanly huge by breaking it into small bits of passing terror. It was certainly better than the alternative--better than if it all poured over her at once, and totally overwhelmed her. She had calming techniques for this--square breathing was the first, the most important, the most useful. Breathe in for a count of four, hold it, exhale, repeat. In theory it slowed her racing pulse, and undid the unbearable knot of anxiety in her chest, but in this case it wasn't working at all. _Dammit_. Maybe all the friends who thought she was crazy were right.

She kept her eyes resolutely on her dinner (or, for her, breakfast), trying to simply wait it out. There wasn't a hell of a lot else she could do, unless she wanted to run screaming through the restaurant, which she most emphatically did not. It'd go away. It had to, and when it did she'd be able to look at whoever was beside her without fear. And then she'd grimace inwardly, chagrined, as she always did when faced with some stranger who, for whatever stupid reason, reminded her so sharply of John Ryder.

The last of her pancakes mopped up the last of her syrup, and the thick black coffee washed it all down. Caffeine wasn't good for anxiety attacks, but oh fucking well--if it would keep her awake all night, it was worth it. She was just about to hail the waitress to see if she could get her Thermos filled for the road, but something made her freeze, and made her breath catch in her throat. Her neighbor's hand had brushed hers, and the slight touch was an electric jolt that shot up her arm like sheet-lightning. Without willing it she looked up, and found herself face-to-face with the man whose head she'd blown off a year ago.

He hadn't changed at all. There was no sign of the injuries she'd given him, of the scores the shotgun pellets had made along his face. His blue eyes were alight with an almost childish glee, and with something else Grace _did not_ want to see. Shitshit_shit_, what in the name of fucking hell--

Most people--even Grace herself, as she used to be--would have paused, convinced it was impossible. She still thought so now, but rather than hesitate her base instincts compelled her to toss some money on the counter and, not to put too fine a point on it, flee. That was a lesson she'd learned quite well a year ago--when faced with John Ryder, you ran the fuck away, and hoped to God he couldn't follow you.

_He always followed, though. Somehow--God only _knows_ how--he always fucking found them, and he'd caught Jim and he'd tried to rape her and ohshitohshitohshit--_

She was barely aware of her shoes--sneakers this time, much more sensible than boots--pounding over the parking lot, nor of the angry shouts of the waitress. All she knew was that she had to run, as she'd run a year ago, and hope like hell she could escape now. The rest of it--the sheer impossibility of it--she could deal with later, one she'd made sure she was going to remain alive and in one piece. She fumbled for her room key, nearly dropping it as the damn shakes took her over again, and once she was in her room she slammed the door and locked it, shoving a chair under the knob for good measure.

_He's not here, he can't be here, goddammit he's _dead_, I watched him die, I _killed_ him, for Christ's sake--_

Clothes into her duffel bag, grabbing her toothbrush from the cup by the sink, throwing everything in without any sort of order.

__

Nothing could survive that, I mean, I shot him in the fucking head, I saw his brain splatter, and oh God I'm never going to forget that ever ever ever--

Her jacket, an old grey hoodie of Jim's, went into the bag last, and then she'd zipped it shut and staggered for the door. She was so agitated that she actually failed the first three times she tried to unlock it, her hands shaking so badly that it was a wonder she managed it at all.

Grace stumbled out into the parking lot, out into the still-baking evening, throwing her bag into the back of her car and diving in, managing the door on the second try. No time to pay her bill--no time to do anything but run, run. God, wasn't it a good thing Janet and/or Philip hadn't come with her, she thought--if they could see her now, they'd think she really had gone insane. They'd stand there with their little Dictaphones, and probably not budge until John lashed out and stabbed someone.

It was a horrible thought, but in her current state it dissolved Grace into a fit of dangerously hysterical giggling. It was laugh, cry, or scream, and the first was the most conducive to driving--she slammed the car into gear and sped out onto the highway with a mad screech of tires, leadfooting it as though she were trying to outrun the tachometers of Hell. She was still shaking, so badly that the car was actually weaving a little, but she was running, she was away and she'd be _far_ away by tomorrow morning, taking whatever strange snaking route she could to avoid the man--or thing, God only knew what he was--who'd terrorized her nightmares for a year.

She pushed her hair out of her eyes, her laughter ebbing into hitching sobs, and she bit her lip so hard it bled as she sped on, the sunset staining the western sky an almost unpleasant carmine.

"Shit," she muttered, giving voice to her inner mantra. "Shit, shit, _shit_, what the hell _was _that? It can't be him, he's fucking dead, he's fucking _dead_--"

A hand--a very large, rough hand--reached from behind her seat and tangled in her hair, and the cold sharpness of steel pressed against her cheek.

"Funny thing, death," John whispered, very close to Grace's ear. "It's not as permanent as you'd think."

"_Shit!_"

It wasn't her fault she let go of the wheel. Last time he'd shoved a knife in her face she'd been a passenger; she hadn't had to try to keep control of a speeding vehicle with something sharp and pointy jammed just beneath her eye. Likewise, it wasn't really her fault they went careening off the road and nearly slammed into a telephone pole--it was only a miracle he didn't accidentally gouge her damn eye out as they crashed through sagebrush and over rocks that had to be the size of basketballs. By sheer luck she managed to at least make it back to the side of the road, twisting in her seat and trying to avoid the knife, all while doing her level best not to roll the car or run into anything else.

John's hand left her hair, reaching around her to catch the steering wheel and level the car out as much as was possible. Between his arm and the knife, Grace was completely trapped--she couldn't even throw herself out the door (not that that would have been a great idea anyway, considering how fast they were going, but at least it had been an _option_). She'd leaned back into the seat as far as she could, but the knife's pressure--almost gentle, but still firm enough to cause real discomfort--didn't ease.

She didn't bother asking him what he wanted. He'd wanted to die, and she'd killed him; did he want her to do it _again?_ Or did he want some kind of payback, some chance to kill her or rape her, or both? She hadn't forgotten how strong he was; she didn't have a chance in hell of evading him if he didn't let _go_ of her.

"Pull over," he said, still very near her ear, and between the two of them they managed to get the car off the road without wrecking it. She was definitely sweating now, her hair sticking to her forehead in damp unpleasant tendrils, and she swallowed hard as they rolled to a stop. How the hell he could have even gotten _into_ her car in such a short time, Grace didn't know, but there were more pressing matters at hand right now. Like the knife, which was still pressing into her face.

He didn't say anything--for a long moment they both sat in silence, broken only by the faint ticking of the engine as it cooled. Grace didn't know what there was _to_ say, and she was too busy trying to control the damn shakes anyway--the last thing she wanted was to, in essence, stab herself because she couldn't hold still.

The blade left her eye, tracing very lightly down along her cheek, all the way down to her jaw. "Get out of the car," John said, reaching to open her door. "And don't run." Even if she'd been stupid enough to think that would do any good, his tone made it quite clear that it simply wasn't an option. He brought the knife away from her face, and she somehow managed to step out onto the gravel without falling over.

…Jesus Christ, he was tall. Grace wasn't a short woman, but John was a good head taller than her, and something in his demeanor made him seem taller still--he really _hadn't_ changed, had he? God, he'd even gotten a new overcoat from somewhere, though how he wasn't broiling in it in this heat, she couldn't begin to guess. He hadn't put the knife away, which wasn't a good sign; it remained in his right hand, as naturally as if it belonged there, while he looked down at her with something very like amusement in his eyes. Amusement, and that look she dreaded, and…something else entirely, something curious that was quite separate from the unnerving predatory gleam. Nobody could call John Ryder even remotely sane--he wasn't a gibbering madman, but if anything that only made it worse. Cold and calculating and possessed of a singularly sadistic sense of humor, she knew he was far more dangerous even than he looked.

Finally, as she leaned against the door for support, he said, "You're shaking."

"Yeah," she said, having more or less given up trying to control it. "It happens sometimes." She was hardly aware of what left her mouth; all she knew was that she was scared out of her mind and that there had to, _had to_ be some way out of this.

Quite without warning, John reached out and touched her arm with his free hand, just below the sleeve of her T-shirt. She jumped, and though he didn't smile his _eyes_ did. "You're not cold," he observed, tracing one long rough finger over her elbow, and she flinched automatically.

"It's just a thing," she said, fighting desperately against the urge to pull away. "They say it's stress. It comes and goes." What the hell was she saying? It definitely wasn't going to go away so long as she was within fifty miles of John fucking Ryder.

"…Ah." His hand closed around her upper arm, yanking her forward until the lapels of his coat scratched her shoulders. "Well, I can't let you go through that without helping, can I?"

_Shit, he's going to stab me,_ Grace thought, in the split instant before his fist connected with the side of her head.

It was an expert blow, designed to render her unconscious without doing her any actual harm. She collapsed at once, knocked out cold, but he caught her easily enough. It was…easier, this way, if she wasn't awake to shake and ask questions and be, well, _resourceful_. John had wanted her to kill him before, and had, all in all, been rather proud when she'd managed it, but that wasn't what he wanted now.

Grace's car really was unfortunately small, though--he got her loaded into the passenger seat without issue, but the thing clearly hadn't been built with tall people in mind. It would work well enough for now, though; they didn't have too far to go, and then…well, it might be a long, long while before they'd need to move.

John didn't actually have a _plan_. He hadn't expected to ever see her again; he would have figured Grace would never want to revisit this area, and if she did, certainly not so soon. The opportunity had been too fortuitous to pass up--she'd killed him, she'd _escaped_ him, but it was quite clear that somehow she had not become him in doing so. She had it in her to kill, but she obviously had derived no enjoyment from it--whatever she'd gone through the in the last year, it had not been kind to her. She was too thin--to his eyes, she seemed almost transparent, like something made of glass. Seemingly fragile, but if she'd really been so breakable she wouldn't have fled. The vast, vast majority of people he'd ever run across had folded like a house of cards, choosing to beg rather than try to escape, but not Grace, even now. She was a fighter, his Grace.

_His_ Grace. Her dark hair needed brushing, and John reached out a hand to trace his fingers lightly over it. It wasn't silky-soft--there was a roughness to it, just as there was a roughness in her, something he'd seen lurking beneath her bright-college-girl exterior from the moment he'd laid eyes on her. He'd noticed that when he first grabbed her in the car a year ago, yanking her forward so he could jam this very same knife just beneath her eye--how oddly rough her hair was, tangled between his fingers. It had smelled of some nameless shampoo, something clean and sweet, and even while he was threatening to slice her face up he'd rested his cheek against her head, breathing in that strange clean scent.

His hand stroked down over her cheek, along the long smooth line of her neck, his fingers tracing her unhealthily pale skin with a kind of dreadful gentleness. Anything like gentleness from John Ryder usually meant something conversely awful would shortly follow, but for now Grace was rather mercifully spared any fear that might bring.

They drove on, and on, speeding through the desert as the sun set and inky darkness bled into the sky. It was close to four in the morning before they finally reached John's destination--an isolated, abandoned cabin, something that wouldn't have looked out of place on the set of _Deliverance_. It was a place he sometimes came, usually in winter when the, ah, trade was slower, but it would serve his purpose just as well now.

He pocketed Grace's keys and carried her (still very unconscious) into the cabin. Her breathing was still deep and even, but her sleep, if so it could be called, wasn't easy--she stirred and mumbled and occasionally twitched, lost in what had to be some very unpleasant dreams. Whether her waking would be better or worse, he hadn't yet decided; time enough for that later, he thought, as he deposited her on the bed and pulled her shoes off.

That strange shaking she'd suffered earlier hadn't fully abated when he'd knocked her out, either. All throughout the drive they would come and go, sometimes shivering through her with such violence that it rattled her seatbelt. She was doing it again now, shuddering in her sleep as though she were in deep cold, rather than a sweltering desert night.

John watched her, curious, and after a moment lay down beside her, running a hand over her arm, her side, his hand tracing up along her back as she turned. While he knew approximately eight million ways to severely fuck with the human psyche, his actual technical knowledge was close to nil, so he neither knew what PTSD was nor how it could cause such an odd extremity of unconscious terror. Then again, he thought, almost smugly, perhaps she was dreaming of him.

His other hand touched her hair again, and he took the opportunity to bury his face in it, breathing in the mingled perfume of shampoo and desert heat and something that was just Grace. Her hair might be rough, but her skin was soft beneath his fingers, and for a moment all the twisted self-satisfaction left his face, replaced with an expression that was somehow even worse--strange, possessive, and hungry in a way that was not carnal so much as predatory. He _had _her now, and he had every intention of keeping her.

* * *

Grace's consciousness was slow to return, preferring to linger in the nebulous realm of her nightmares than face the much worse nightmare that would surely await her upon waking.

The first thing she was aware of--if 'aware' was even the right word--was something slightly rough beneath her cheek, some strange coarse fabric she wasn't used to. She had a few precious moments of blessed confusion, lingering in the haze between sleeping and waking, and then her sense of smell caught up with her sense of touch and assailed her with the cotton-oil-thunderstorm scent that had been torturing her all through her dreams. Her eyes slammed open, and almost instinctively she flailed, sitting up and jerking away with surprising speed. God, how long had he been there? How long had _she_ been here? And while they were on the subject, where was 'here', anyway? Christ, he'd been lying beside her and she'd had her head on his chest and oh shit, here came the damn shakes again--

It was John who snapped her out of her inward-spiraling panic, replacing it with a much more immediate outward fear. He caught her wrist and pulled her back down beside him, his arm locking around her waist like a steel vice. He smiled at her, at her sudden wide-eyed horror, and though it was an almost pleasant smile it still scared the living hell out of her. "Morning," he said, brushing the hair out of her eyes with one finger. Grace just stared at him, doing her level best not to hyperventilate, to _think_, but that was almost impossible right now.

Fuck. This, to put it mildly, was _bad._

* * *

Hee! Okay, if you haven't seen the deleted hotel scenes with John and Grace, you must watch them--as my daughter would say, they are HAWST. We're talking electricity you could charge a cell phone with. I've tried to work some of that into this chapter, though I don't know how successful I've been.

This is probably going to wind up all kinds of disturbing next chapter, given that John is…John, and Grace is Grace, and he's just a _little_ obsessive. Fun times to be had by all (unless you're Grace. Then you're just kind of hosed). XD


	3. The Storm

Perpetrator's Note: Okay, this whole chapter is dark and exceptionally twisted. It's got what I have to call quasi-rape, which is…well, you'll see. Suffice it to say it disturbed me to write it, but since it's these two…well. Yeah. They're just Special like that.

* * *

The instinct that had compelled Grace to flee now made her freeze, staying as still as she possibly could. Her conscious mind was busy quietly panicking, but her subconscious--the place that stored the worst of her memories and only rarely let them out--was already searching for an opening, _any_ opening. There were only so many things John was likely to do to her, but unfortunately all of them were awful.

She remained still as his finger passed down along the line of her cheek, but as soon as it reached her neck the shivers returned twofold, making her shudder so violently her teeth rattled. Some of her nightmares had involved things like this--again, Janet had told her it was only natural, especially since the trauma of attempted rape had immediately been compounded by that of Jim's murder.

And yet there was nothing terrible in the touch itself, which only made it worse. He wasn't _hurting_ her--for the moment, anyway--and if it had been anyone else it would have been all right. The problem wasn't being touched, it was that John Ryder was doing the touching. Grace knew how strong his hand were; he could probably crush her skull between them if he wanted to. She'd never known anyone that strong before--Jim certainly hadn't been, and he'd made an effort to keep in shape.

His hand came to rest on her shoulder, and though there was something like concern in his expression, that wasn't comforting. "You're shaking again," he said, quite unnecessarily, and before she could respond he'd pulled her close to him, his other arm wrapping around her as he rested his chin against the crown of her head. This close she couldn't help but notice he wore some kind of aftershave, too, nor could she avoid feeling the faint roughness of his shirt against her cheek.

If John thought that would calm her shaking, he was sadly mistaken--it only made her shudder more violently than ever, until she tried to curl into a ball to escape it. It was so _hot_ in here, and hotter still beside him--she couldn't breathe, she couldn't see, and shit, she had to move, she _had_ to--

Grace sat up, or tried to--John's hold on her tightened until it was just this side of painful, and she looked up at him, hating herself for shivering, and still worse for the tremor that shook her voice as she said, "I can't breathe. Just…just let me up, okay? I can't--just let me up, _please_."

To her surprise, John obliged her, though he watched her closely as he did so, and his arm remained around her waist as he sat with her. It was easier to breathe this way at least, even if she was still hideously aware of his proximity. She felt his hand brush her hair back as he almost pulled her onto his lap, his breath a hot soft stirring against her ear. Again, his hold on her was almost gentle, just as it had been in the car, but it could become decidedly less so at any moment.

Practically gulping air, Grace did her best to hold still, and failed miserably. This whole thing was so nightmarish it didn't seem real--except for John. You couldn't get much more real than John Ryder.

"Aren't you going to ask me what I want?" he prompted, brushing the hair from her neck now, fingers rough along the line of her spine.

"Why?" Grace said, the words rendered only slightly unsteady by her continued shuddering. "What good would that do?" He'd laid his hand along the back of her neck, fingers curling against her shoulder--he could probably snap it right now if he wanted to, but if she knew anything about him, he wouldn't do anything so comparatively merciful.

John laughed, his strange congenial laugh that was so at odd with what she knew of him. That was the thing about him--he could appear to be honestly friendly and charming, right up until the point where he most definitely wasn't. "That's my Grace," he said, his hand leaving her neck so he could wrap his arm around her shoulders. God, she wished he'd let her go--his touch was dreadful, which was not the same thing as repulsive. Even a year later she hadn't yet sorted out just what it had really been, and he certainly wasn't helping her do so now. Nor, really, was him referring to her as 'his'. Not precisely good for anyone's peace of mind, that.

She didn't respond. He _wanted _a response--wanted her to thrash and fight him and try to run--but she'd learned, a year ago. Don't panic, don't waste your strength unless you're sure you've got a real chance. Grace had thought she'd had one in the car, but she knew damn well she didn't now. Running would be stupid, now, since she'd be running blind, and she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of watching her lose a physical struggle. She couldn't pretend to be calm, but she could at least fail to freak the fuck out. If he wanted her to do something, she damn well wasn't going to do it, out of sheer spite if nothing else.

"I can't say I think much of your wardrobe this trip, though," John added, his fingers dipping beneath the collar of her T-shirt--it was, like so many of the things she'd brought with her, an old one of Jim's, soft and faded grey-blue by many washings. "We might have to do something about that." So saying, he at once shattered her resolve to avoid reacting by yanking at the shirt's collar so hard it ripped out the shoulder seams and tore it straight down the back.

Grace jumped, and actually shrieked, which she'd be horribly ashamed of later. Hot though it was, the air that hit her suddenly-bare skin seemed cool, and dry in a way that almost felt like a caress. _Now_ she fought, unable to stop herself or even really realize what she was doing. She kicked and punched and tried to bite him, but John only laughed, grabbing her and holding her hard enough to take her breath away.

"You're not stupid, Grace," he murmured against her temple. "You knew this was coming."

"That doesn't mean I have to like it," she managed, through gritted teeth.

John yanked her backward, catching both her hands in his and pinning her to the bed. "You don't have to, no," he said, giving her his crooked grin. "But you do anyway."

Grace stared up at him, horrified. He'd hit on a very, very sore, disturbing subject, one she'd touched only peripherally even with Janet. She still periodically had dreams about the hotel, about John and what he'd tried to do to her, and they were sometimes so troubling she couldn't speak of them to anyone.

She'd never been one of those sick fucks who got off on pain. There were plenty of girls at school who did--who were into the leather and bondage and BDSM shit, who actually acted out rape fantasies--but Grace had always been revolted by the whole idea. She still was, in a strictly abstract sense, but there was part of her--some poisonous, treacherous part, the same part that had made her capable of killing John--that had _liked_ it. Not the struggling or the fighting, but just John's hands on her, the roughness of his skin and the nearness of his desert-scent, so unlike anyone else she'd ever known. Weirdly, it wasn't necessarily even a carnal thing, either--that was definitely there, but it wasn't the whole if it. There was nothing spank-me-dominate-me in it; it wasn't nearly that simple, which was why Grace had never been able to properly explain it to Janet. Fighting John--touching John--was like battling some kind of force of Nature, and while there was a definite sort of dark sexual thrill to it, the bulk of it was much more a clash of wills, a battle of stubbornness and psychological warfare, exhausting an thrilling and completely, utterly wrong. Or so she told herself.

At any rate, there was no way in hell John could _know_ that. He couldn't know she'd had dreams where she _hadn't_ fought him off, where he'd broken her and she'd broken him and she'd woken in the night drenched in sweat and wondering if she really was losing her mind. Janet had assured her that such confused feelings weren't nearly as uncommon as she might think, nor did they mean she was some sort of depraved slut. The human psyche was a lot more complicated than most of society would have one believe, Janet said, and if that was part of the way her brain chose to break everything down, it was nothing to be ashamed of.

Which sounded fine in the therapist's office, but being confronted with it while she was being pinned down by a half-grinning serial killer made it another thing entirely. Shit.

John raised his eyebrows. "No denial?" he said.

"Why bother?" Grace returned. "You wouldn't believe me anyway."

"True." He transferred his grip on both her hands to one of his, but instead of hitting her or hurting her he touched her collarbone, his hand tracing down her sternum and along her side with a gentleness that was quite terrible, watching her with an extremely unhealthy fascination. Grace had known he was a little obsessive, to put it mildly, but even she had had no idea of the true depth of that obsession.

She swallowed hard, tensing and shivering but not fighting, not yet. John managed to get rid of the rest of her ruined T-shirt while she waited, watching for even the smallest chance she might find to…what? She couldn't run, and she didn't have a chance of killing him unless he wanted to be killed.

She shut her eyes as he reached for the snaps and zipper of her worn jeans, trying to think and failing. It was sensory overload, all of it--not just John's touch but the breathless heat of the room and the strange hot thunderstorm-scent that couldn't be just him--

It wasn't just him. Even as he pulled at her jeans, thunder rumbled in the distance, and Grace opened her eyes to look out the window. The western sky was bruise-black, crackling here and there with jagged silver filigrees of lightning. It was weirdly beautiful, and for a moment it served to take her out of herself entirely--it was too powerful a thing to ignore.

It was John who brought her back to herself, letting go of her hands so he could pull her jeans off.

"Always wanted to fuck in a thunderstorm," he purred, and as if his words had snapped some kind of spell Grace kicked at him with one bare foot, hitting him solidly in the ribs. She scrambled upright, reaching for the beside lamp in the hope of braining him with it, but he caught her ankle and yanked, hard, knocking her flat on her back again. He was probably going to hit her, so Grace saw no reason not to keep fighting, and as the thunder rumbled closer she lashed out and actually managed to punch him in the jaw. It was like slamming her fist into a brick, and John grinned when she winced, catching her wrist and pinning it beside her head even as he reached for the buttons of his own shirt.

"Fight me all you want, little Grace," he said, actually managing to rip a few buttons off, "but you belong to the desert now, and I _am_ the desert."

It was a fucking weird thing to say, and she'd realize it later, but for now Grace was too caught up in the whole sensory overload problem again. It wasn't just the smell of the storm or the sudden shifting breezes that broke the hot stagnation of the air--it was _everything_, including the not-wholly-unwelcome feel of John Ryder doing…all sorts of things she shouldn't let him do. She was too distracted to be surprised that he wasn't terribly rough with her--there was a weird, sick, and wholly disturbing aspect to his touch that was almost worshipful, and though he was hungry he wasn't, as she might have expected, brutal. This wasn't _really_ rape, and they both knew it--though just what it _was_ would have to be determined later, when either was capable of coherent thought.

Grace never would be sure just why she went along with him. All she knew was that she felt like she'd popped too many different pills at once, and the strangest things seemed fascinating--the sudden whiteout strobe-effect of lightning; the rough heat of John's skin against hers. She wondered, dimly, if he'd drugged her--bastard seemed capable of almost anything, after all. Maybe he had, maybe he hadn't--either way, the result was the same, and the fact that she feared him and hated him didn't change the effect he had on her. _He_ was like some kind of drug, and the more she fought the more addicted she became, until all that incoherent sensory input overloaded her entirely and left her shaking for very different reasons than previously.

When she finally came back to herself, _really_ came back, she was curled up, sweaty and shivering, beneath the worn comforter. John's arm was around her waist, his chest warm against her back, and she opened her eyes to find the storm still raging outside. The full, huge, massive fucking enormity of what he'd--no, what _they'd--_just done seemed to hit her like a kick to the chest, as all sorts of strange and terrible details presented themselves to her senses. The comforter was amazingly soft, wasn't it? She was hot--too hot--but she still needed it over her, needed something between her and the storm and Jesus fucking Christ, _what_ had she just done? More importantly, what in the name of all hell was she supposed to do now? He had her here, out in God only knew where, more or less completely at what dubious mercy he possessed, and she'd just--they'd just--and she'd _liked _it; that horrible murderous stranger, that had never really left her head in spite of all the drugs, had liked it.

_I'm losing my fucking mind_, she thought, and then, immediately, _No, I already lost it. I just didn't know until now. _Whatever part of her that had really been _Grace_ had died with Jim, and had been buried when she'd blasted John's head in half. What she was now, even she didn't know--but, given that it was a person who would more or less willingly let John do all that--she probably didn't _want_ to know.

She didn't realize she was crying until John touched her face, and shifted her onto her back so he could look at her. There were all sorts of things she should say, none of which she could give voice to, but by some miracle he didn't ask her to. All he did was lay down again, pulling her close so her head rested on his chest. Her tears were so hot they almost seemed to burn him where they touched his skin, but he didn't mind--he let her cry, brushing her hair back from her forehead like she was a child, smiling a little in the half-darkness.

"It's all right," he murmured, still stroking her sweat-damp hair. "I'll be your family now. You're mine, and I'm all you'll ever have."

* * *

Perpetrator's Note: Phew. I hope that wasn't waaay too incoherent or anything. I really tried to get across the point that it wasn't just some weird kink on Grace's part--I know what I want to convey, just not if I can properly do it. Also, you'll find out what John actually _did_ to her to cause this happy little reaction next chapter. XD


	4. Veteran of the Psychic Wars

Perpetrator's Note: Sorry this one took a little while--I've been sicker than a sick thing for the last few days, and managed about three paragraphs between them. This just gets weirder and weirder the more I write it--John really is one warped bastard, but then he wouldn't be _John_ if he wasn't. XD Once again, warning for massive twisted goodness.

* * *

John didn't move until Grace was well asleep--he remained beside her for a long while, stroking her hair until both her tears and her body were exhausted. Only then did he get up, retrieving his pants and making his way into the tiny kitchen. The storm was still raging outside, wind fluttering the cheap curtains as a few drops of heavy rain drove craters into the dust.

He turned on the stove, fishing several cans of soup out of the pantry. The man who had lived here before him had tapped into the power lines several miles away, so electricity was not an issue, and a well ensured that water wasn't, either. He could keep her here forever, if he wanted to; there was nothing and no one to stop him.

He eyed the small syringe on the counter, half-empty. She'd been too deeply unconscious to notice what he'd done to her in the car, the tiny pinprick of the needle in her forearm. John liked the fact that Grace was a fighter, but there were times he did not want to really be fought.

He'd need all these drugs, he knew--he didn't want her running if he left her alone in the cabin. It was only sheer luck he'd killed a doctor recently--a doctor who had screamed like a bitch and bled like a stuck pig, but who had had a veritable traveling pharmacy in his bag.

There were a few odds and ends in the freezer--ground beef, which he took out to thaw, and some frozen vegetables that would make a good addition to soup. All his ingredients laid out, he peered into the bedroom to check on Grace, then stepped out onto the porch for a smoke, and a chance to get some of Grace's things from her car. He doubted very much she'd be too thrilled by his (very basic) toiletries, so he fished some of her bags out of the hatchback and hauled them back to the cabin, depositing them just inside the door.

John knew Grace was going to be difficult to control. It was one of the things about her that captivated him, one of the things that would challenge him. However much she didn't want to admit it, they were akin in a way, and he intended to make her realize it. He'd break her, but not all the way--he didn't think he could if he wanted to, but he _didn't_ want to.

He flicked the cigarette butt into a coffee can half-full of water beside the door, and went in to check his ingredients. Hot though it was, it would be a while before everything thawed, so he went in and sat beside the bed, threading his fingers through Grace's long, sweat-damp hair. Her face was still wet with tears, tendrils of hair sticking to her cheeks, and he ran his fingers along the faintly-glistening tracks of those tears, fascinated. He bent his head to kiss them, very lightly, tasting hot salt and breathing in the complex scent of fear and desire and sheer exhaustion.

"Grace," he murmured, softly, so as not to wake her. "My Grace."

She looked so desperately unhappy, even through her sleep, and John didn't want that just now. What they'd done had broken her, just a little, and he didn't want her breaking too quickly.

He filled a bowl with lukewarm water at the kitchen sink, and retrieved a washcloth from the bathroom. She felt almost feverish, and with creepily obsessive care he used the cloth to wipe the sweat and tears from her face. From anyone else the gesture would have been almost sweet, but from John it really was quite terrible--it said that yes, he was caring for her, but only because he'd used a combination of drugs and trickery to get her to let him fuck her.

He continued to her neck, the water cool and soothing as he rinsed away the sweat and desert-dust. Her collarbones, far too pronounced, her shoulders thin and fine-boned as a bird's wing. She needed a little weight back, John thought, or she'd blow away in the desert wind.

Finally Grace stirred, shifting as he drew the cloth down her arm, and lingering drugs or no, the first thing she did when she opened her eyes was try to hit him. Her swing went wild, and he caught her hand easily, smiling a little as he brought her arm down and pinned it across her chest. Her dark eyes were panic-wide, but he placed a finger to her lips before she could say anything.

"Shh," he said. "Not now." Somewhat to her own surprise, Grace actually obliged him, and was more surprised still when she made no protest when he drew her to her feet. The carpet was old and coarse beneath her feet, but surprisingly clean--she would not have suspected John Ryder of being a tidy man, but, old though everything in this strange cabin was, it had clearly been taken care of. She took it all in, bleary and with a strange clarity all at once, as he led her to the small bathroom. Worn linoleum, pale green and white, a shower with an old-fashioned spigot. Part of her really didn't like the fact that she didn't have any clothes on, but another, much larger part didn't care, and when he turned on the tap and steered her under the cool water, she gave up the idea of fighting. She shut her eyes, letting the drops splash her and wash off more than just dirt. She _needed_ a shower, desperately, needed to wash off the taint of whatever the hell she'd just done, though part of that stain was, she knew, in her soul. Something was severely wrong with her--she'd known it for the last year, but until now it had never had the opportunity to be this…obvious.

She jumped when something touched her--her loofah, of all things. All her little things, her lotion and deodorant and shower gel, were ranged around the bathroom, and that more than almost anything else brought home to Grace just how permanent a situation this might be. She tried to turn, but John caught her shoulder and held her still a moment, before shutting the curtain. For a moment she was afraid he'd tried to join her--she didn't think there was any way in hell she could handle that, not with how tense and bewildered she was--but a moment later the door clicked shut, and she breathed a sigh of pure relief. She needed a little time to herself, to figure out what the hell was going on, and just what she was supposed to _do_ about it.

Fact: She'd been kidnapped by John fucking Ryder, and dragged out to God only knew where, all lines of communication presumably cut.

Fact: She'd _fucked_ John fucking Ryder, or…something like that. It wasn't that simple, and Grace just didn't have the energy to try to sort the whole thing out. Let that one stand for now.

Fact: This whole situation pretty much guaranteed he could do whatever the hell he wanted to her. Yeah, she'd killed him once, but she highly doubted he'd give her the opportunity to do so again--he was a little too smart for his own good, and unless he wanted to die, the odds of her getting the chance to off him were pretty damn slim.

Fact: Grace was, more or less, hosed.

She scrubbed her hair, pondering the whole thing until her head spun, but nothing even remotely like a solution presented itself. Finally, having lingered as long as she dared, she realized she had little choice but to get out and go face the…man…creature…whatever the fuck he was. Through all this, she hadn't forgotten the rather major fact that John had somehow gone from being very dead to very much alive--Grace highly doubted he was related to anything divine, but that was something she couldn't even begin to process just yet. Small things first, massive impossibilities later.

Fortunately, the towels were large--she didn't feel half so uncomfortable making her way back to the bedroom wrapped in one as she would have if they'd been smaller. John had brought in all her bags, it seemed, and she rifled through them for some clean clothes. Uncomfortable, she chose one of Jim's oversized shirts, dressing as quickly as she could and then attacking her wet hair with a hairbrush. Whatever drugs lingered in her system weren't enough to keep away a certain awful trepidation, and she paused to pin her hair up, procrastinating as long as she could. She knew he'd come get her sooner or later, and she didn't really want to give him the satisfaction of getting to come and fetch her, but at the same time she definitely wanted to avoid him as long as possible.

Finally, after dithering in the bedroom for what seemed like an eternity, she stepped out into the hallway and from there into the living room, which turned out to be mercifully empty of John. Like the rest of the cabin, it was worn but tidy, with a sagging couch covered by an afghan that had to have been knitted at some point in the mid-'80's, and a rough coffee table with a few ancient cup-ring stains. No TV and no radio, naturally--nothing that might give contact with the outside world. Fuck.

Grace sat on the couch, resting her feet on the coffee table and hugging her elbows. She'd left the bedroom--she was out and about within the cabin. To her mind, she'd done her duty.

She stared at her hands--slender, long-fingered hands, the hands that had pulled the trigger and shot John in the head. Hands that had killed. Hands that would probably do so again, if given the chance. Would she do it again? _Could_ she do it again?

…Scarily, she probably could. Murder was like…like riding a bicycle--once you'd learned how, it only got easier. It had taken a lot to drive her to it the first time, but it would take a great deal less now. …Wouldn't it?

"Soup's on."

Grace jumped, literally--she hadn't heard John, but he now stood in the doorway, watching her with undeniable amusement and ineffable smugness. What was worse, Grace found herself going an extremely interesting shade of red, made all the worse by the fact that John hadn't bothered to find a shirt yet. Dammit, this was _not_ her fault, so why the hell was it doing…what it was doing to her? She fought a scowl, and just barely won.

"…Right." Catch her giving him any more to smirk about than she absolutely had to. She stood, brushing her hands off on her jeans out of habit more than anything else, and marched grimly into the kitchen. By dint of almost inhuman effort she managed to ignore what she was beginning to think of as John-scent--however intoxicating it might be, she'd be damned if she'd be some kind of total weakling. If he thought she was going to roll over and do his bidding, he had another thing coming--the possibility that he _wanted_ her to fight him had not yet occurred to her.

John being…John, he smirked anyway, reaching out to touch her damp hair as she passed him, and Grace cursed herself when she shivered. She didn't so much as look at him, though; she was stronger than that, at least.

When she entered the kitchen, she found herself in for yet another surprise: John wasn't a half-bad cook. Whatever soup he'd concocted smelled delicious, at least, but she eyed it warily when she sat at the chipped Formica table. She was all but certain he'd already drugged her once; what if he'd decided to do it again? Starving or not, she wasn't going to just chow down on something that might well be poisoned.

Clearly, her thoughts were easy enough to read, for John quirked an eyebrow as he sat across from her. "I haven't done anything to it," he said, ladling some into his bowl. "Keep in mind, I need to eat, too."

He had a point. Still, Grace watched him eat before she dared taste any herself--just because he was eating it didn't guarantee it wasn't laced with something. What was it, that bit from _The Princess Bride_? Both drinks were poisoned, but the one dude had built up an immunity to the poison. For all she knew, John had done the same thing now--on the other hand, though, if she let that particular paranoia rule her, she'd starve to death.

Giving in, she ladled some into her own bowl, and ate in silence, carefully keeping her eyes on, well, everything but John. The bowls were some sort of lacquered metal, with orange flowers painted on the white finish--not the sort of dishes she'd associate with John Ryder at all--and the silverware was old and mismatched. She wondered whose cabin this had been before John got ahold of it, and what he'd done to its original owner.

Thunder growled again, but further off this time--the storm was moving eastward now, the winds dying to fitful breezes. Grace ate her soup in silence, occasionally glancing out the window at the blackened sky, trying to think.

"Do you have a plan?" she asked at last, and now she did look at John, dark eyes meeting blue. "I don't think you do. I don't know how you found me, but you couldn't have known I was coming here, because I didn't know myself until the night before last." She'd set her spoon down so it wouldn't rattle in her unsteady hand, but her shaking was surprisingly subdued now.

John smiled, his crooked half-smile that drove her mad. "No," he said, deceptively quiet. "We'll just have to see how things go, won't we?"

That…wasn't reassuring. If anything, it was worse than if he _did_ have something planned out--it meant he was likely to be completely unpredictable, which only make him that much scarier. Grace looked away, having no real response. She played with her spoon instead, swirling the dregs of her soup, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do. Of course she had to get out, somehow--just how was as yet unknown, but she'd figure it out eventually. The problem…

…well, the problem was John.

She hated the man. She was afraid of him. She was also unhealthily drawn to him, in a way she despised without being able to escape. Part of her wanted to kill him, part of her never wanted to look at him again, and still another wanted to reach across the table and touch him. He had some wicked scars across his chest--clearly, at least a few of his victims had fought back. How many had managed to kill him? Nevermind how he'd come back--that could still wait, and wait, and possibly wait some more--but how many other Graces had there been?

How many other people had he brought to this cabin?

It was a startling thought, made all the more so by the undeniable stab of something that wasn't jealousy. Really.

John laughed quietly, and though Grace didn't look at him she could feel his eyes on her. "None," he said, as though he'd read her mind. "You're the first to come here, alive or dead."

"So?" she challenged, going for denial despite the fact that her reddening face was giving her away.

John raised an eyebrow, grinning at her. "Just saying. You're the only one who's ever been here."

"Isn't that special," Grace snorted, standing and taking her empty bowl to the sink. "At least you don't make it a habit to kidnap people. Nice to know I'm an anomaly."

She hadn't heard him move, but a moment later John was behind her, one arm around her waist, the other hand tangled in her hair, almost but not quite hard enough to hurt. "You're definitely one of a kind, Grace," he said, laughing low in her ear. "You're just lucky I haven't decided what I want to do with you yet."

Jesus, why the hell was he so strong? She already knew he could kill her with his bare hands if he wanted to; he didn't need to keep reiterating the point. "Why is that?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady and mostly succeeding--mostly.

"Because," he returned, against her ear this time, the words little more than a whisper, "until then, you're safe."

Grace shivered, and only partly out of fear. She was suddenly very aware of the warmth of his hand through her shirt, of the feel of his chest against her back. Dammit. "No I'm not," she retorted, by way of distracting herself from that unwelcome awareness. Unfortunately, this time her voice _did_ crack. "Not so long as I'm anywhere near you. Nobody's safe when you're around."

She felt him smile against her ear. "Very true."

Suddenly, before she could even blink, he'd turned her around and backed her up against the refrigerator. Even in this heat the drab olive door was cool enough to make her gasp, and when John's hands found her arms it seemed all the strength ran out of her, until he and the fridge were the only things holding her upright. _Now_ she was afraid--of him, and her reaction to him, and the fact that she really couldn't know just what he would do next. _You're mine_, he'd said, _and I'm all you'll ever have._ And now he was looking at her, as hard and sharp as if he were trying to see straight through to the back of her skull, and that desert-oil-thunderstorm scent seemed to fill her entire world. She literally couldn't look away--he'd trapped her, somehow, trapped her eyes as effectively as he'd trapped her body, and Christ, what the hell was she going to do? He'd devour her whole, in the end, in mind and soul if not body, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.

"No," he said, once again seeming to read her mind. He gave her that damned crooked half-grin again. "No, there isn't. Fight me all you want--it won't change the outcome."

For a moment Grace thought he was going to kiss her, but abruptly he turned away, releasing her, and she breathed a faint sigh of mingled relief and something she would not admit was disappointment. Half-dazed though she was, her eyes narrowed. Smug bastard--she'd show him. Not everything needed to go his way. Moving with startling speed, she snatched up one of the assortment of glass jars on the counter and swung it, hard, at John's head.

To her infinite surprise, it actually connected, smashing into a thousand porcelain fragments and sending white clouds of flower everywhere. More surprising still was the fact that it dropped him like a stone, laying him out cold on the kitchen floor.

"Holy shit," she muttered, dropping the shattered remains of the jar. "Holy shit, holy shit, I just…" Just knocked John Ryder out like a light.

_You shouldn't have done that_.

No, she shouldn't have. Not because she felt guilty--of course she didn't; God knew he deserved it, and the fact that he was now bleeding from his temple didn't mean anything, it _didn't_--but because if he woke up too soon, he might well kill her.

"Fuck," she whispered. What was she supposed to do now?

__

Run.

Run. Runrunrun…she needed her keys for that, and she had no idea where he would have put them. Somewhere she wouldn't think to look, surely--or at least, somewhere he'd _think_ she wouldn't think to look. Crap.

The next fifteen minutes saw Grace tearing the cabin apart, looking in every conceivable place and a few that were just ridiculous, like the toilet tank. Fearful that he'd wake too soon, she hunted up a roll of duct tape and bound John's hands behind him before resuming her panicked search. Keys, suitcase, some water…she could get out, she could get _home_, and then…well, 'then' could remain conveniently nebulous for now.

She finally found her keys in one of the most unlikely spots imaginable--under a peeling corner of the linoleum in the bathroom. That done, she hurled her bags into the car and tore off down the dirt road as though all of hell were at her heels. Once again she was shaking, adrenaline coursing through her in gut-wrenching waves, but it was all right. She was out. She was free.

She'd also gone a good five miles before she realized she'd never once thought of killing John before she left.

* * *

Perpetrator's Note: Aaaand it just gets worse. John is not going to react well to that at all, but he deserved to be shaken up a little. Neither of them are particularly happy next chapter, but at least they're sharing their misery. Hooray for complete and utter dysfunction. :)


	5. No Place Called Home

Perpetrator's Note: An update, at long, looong last. Sorry this took so damn long--RL has been crazy and somewhat unhappy and not conducive to anything creative.

I said last chapter that nobody was going to wind up happy, and God did I mean it. This one is twisted and violent and all kinds of disturbing in general, so consider yourselves warned. John being John, and now Grace being Grace, means this Will Not End Well. Grace is…definitely losing it a little now, and will probably only continue to do so as things go along. The way their characters and their interaction grew in this chapter surprised even me--I'm not sure where they're going, but even I can't really predict them at this point. XD I think there's maybe one more chapter after this, depending on how they decide to behave.

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It wasn't until she reached pavement that grace allowed herself to relax a little. There was nowhere out there John could have hidden a car--that she'd seen, at least--and with any luck she'd be miles away before he even woke up.

She laughed a little, almost hysterically. The whole thing was like some kind of nightmare, something that was already beginning to fade--mostly, anyway. The feel of John's hand on her stomach still lingered, as did the warmth of his lips against her ear. Even the memory made her shiver, and she sat on it, hard. She might be a little cracked, but she refused to be freaking depraved.

Focus. She had no idea how far she was from something like civilization, but once she got there she could work on going…where? Back to her parents? That wasn't her home anymore, and they certainly wouldn't believe her if she told them what had happened--shit, who would? They'd just think she'd gone _really_ insane. And…well, there was nothing for her there now. She wasn't the same Grace Andrews. She needed…

…she needed to start over. To forget John, to even forget Jim. Didn't she? Everything had seemed so clear only the other day, when she'd driven to New Mexico with no real purpose. Maybe she could get that back, somehow, once she'd driven John out of her head.

If she could do that.

New Mexico was home. She'd known that as soon as she'd crossed the border; it at least was irrefutable. She'd know no peace if she went anywhere else. On the other hand, if she stayed, John was almost certain to find her, and it was only reasonable to assume he'd be pretty pissed off whenever he finally woke up. Grace didn't know what a severely pissed John Ryder might do, and she didn't want to find out.

She fumbled in her glove compartment, hunting for her cell phone on the off chance John hadn't thought to find it and destroy it. No such luck--it was gone, which didn't really surprise her. Oh well. She probably wouldn't have gotten any reception out here anyway.

She caught herself drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, and clicked the radio on instead. As she'd suspected, the reception was absolute shit, so she switched it over to her CD player, hoping it would kill all her brain's attempts at cogent thought. It kept trying to ask her why she hadn't killed John when she'd had the chance--why she hadn't smashed his head in, or at least cut his throat. She had it in her to do it--she'd realized that in the shower--so why hadn't she _done_ it? If he did manage to catch up to her, he'd almost surely kill her, or at least make her _wish_ she was dead.

She rolled down her window, suddenly needing the fresh air. The storm hadn't dropped much rain, but it had cleared the air nonetheless, filling it with an electric charge that tingled over her skin. So what if it smelled like John? So what if…Christ, why could she not ignore this? Why was he still in her head, in her thoughts, his shadow following her and shit, when would it end? Something inside her hurt, an almost physical pain, and Grace cursed herself, pulling onto the gravel shoulder and resting her head against the steering wheel. She really was out of her mind, wasn't she? She couldn't go forward and she couldn't go back, and fuck, why didn't she have any Valium?

He'd killed Jim. She had to remind herself of that every time her still slightly drug-addled brain tried to convince her John was actually human. He'd killed Jim, and that family, and God only knew how many others--Grace had it in her to kill, but she'd never do it for pleasure, and she sure as hell wouldn't kill children. John had so much blood on his hands

--_long hands, the rough hands of someone who really worked, touching her like no one else ever had, not even Jim--_

And he would only wind up with more. John was a killer, plain and simple, and would always _be_ a killer, and that right there ought to disqualify him as anything other than someone to run the hell away from. She shouldn't even be _thinking_ about…what she was thinking about, let alone have actually paused to consider it. John had as much as said that she wouldn't be safe once he'd figured out what he wanted to do with her--had she really gotten so crazy that that didn't seem to matter?

_Not just crazy, that's seriously criminally stupid_. The only smart thing to do would be to get moving again, but she hesitated just a moment more before pulling back out onto the highway. She wouldn't admit to herself that part of her was going to actually _miss_ John, because admitting that would imply that she'd turned into the sick, depraved thing she was trying so hard to avoid.

She pulled back out onto the highway, determined to at least get moving again, even if her thoughts were a hopeless tangle. _Unless he…did something to me._ Could he do that? Fuck around with her head without her being aware of it? Stupid question, really--he was John Ryder. Grace really wouldn't put it past him. It was a good thing she wasn't going back to the therapists, or they'd have had a fucking field day with _that_ one.

She was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn't notice the truck until it was almost literally on top of her. It was a Dodge somethingorother, one of those huge thyroidal monsters that ate far more gas than they were worth, and, the narrative of Grace's life being what it had been so far, naturally John was driving it. _Damn_ the man, it shouldn't be possible for him to cover that kind of ground so quickly--it was her car all over again; he simply shouldn't have had enough time to get where he was. But no, it was John, and he looked…cranky.

_Fuck_. There was no way in hell she could hope to outrun him--not in her little VW, which was pretty damn gutless--but that didn't mean she was just going to roll over and let him catch her. If John wanted her back, he was going to have to work for it, goddamnit.

_You're nuts. You're certifiably fucking loony, you know that? _She didn't know where the thought had come from--probably the last lingering vestiges of her common sense. "No shit," she muttered aloud. All right, one of three things was going to happen: she'd fuck this up and roll her car, and probably break her neck; she'd misjudge her turn and wind up T-boned, and probably _also_ break her neck; or, unlikeliest of all, it would actually work, and would only _maybe_ kill her. _Only one way to find out_.

She swerved, jamming her feet on the brake and the clutch, yanking the steering wheel as hard as she could. Jim had managed a 360 in the 442, but it had been more accident than anything else, and the 442 wasn't a box--anything of the same general design as Grace's squareback seemed _built _to flip over. She wasn't going for a 360 herself, though, and she prayed that might work in her favor.

Her car spun out like a demented top, spraying a shower of gravel over the road, but she caught it midway through the spin and by some miracle _didn't_ flip it. She didn't know what in the name of all hell she thought she was doing, but that insane stranger who seemed intent on taking her over was insisting this was a good idea. Judging by John's expression through the truck's grimy windshield, he was as surprised as she was, and that alone made the crazy stranger slam her car into gear and head straight for him. The part of her that was actually _Grace_ had more or less given up--if crazy stranger-Grace wanted to get her killed, it wasn't her lookout. Or…something like that. She was going to go ahead and blame everything on the drugs, because that was easiest, and it might even be at least partially true. She'd certainly never do anything so completely stupid if she were fully sober.

She floored the accelerator almost dreamily, wondering if John would realize she was playing the ultimate game of chicken before he actually ran into her. She couldn't imagine him turning aside, and was terribly surprised when, at the very last second, he did. The truck skidded as she sailed by, and John's look of complete shock was one that would keep Grace warm at night, assuming she lived long enough to have further nights. She _still_ couldn't outrun him, and now that she'd failed to die in an explosion of fiery death, she wasn't sure what was going to happen.

_Pull over._

"Why?" she asked aloud.

_Just do it._ This obviously wasn't her dying practicality speaking--it had to be crazy-Grace, who seemed well on her way to becoming her own separate entity.

"Fuck you," Grace muttered, shoving her hair out of her eyes. She would have said more, but John's truck slammed into the back of her car nearly hard enough to ram her head into the steering wheel. She swore, and stomped the accelerator again, though she knew it was pointless.

_Dammit, PULL OVER._

In the end, it was her car itself that pulled her over--something in the steering column gave out when John hit her again, and the car pulled over right into a telephone pole. She didn't just hit the steering wheel that time; her ancient seatbelt gave out, and she went headfirst into the windscreen.

_Good one_. Crazy-Grace sounded a little too smug by half, and Grace swore back at her as she pressed her hands to her bleeding forehead.

"It was your idea," she hissed, somehow forcing the door open and staggering out onto the gravel. She was dizzy, bloody, and definitely wanted to puke--facing John was only one in a whole line of troubles, and at least if he killed her she wouldn't feel so sick to her stomach.

_Running into a telephone pole was NOT my idea. I TOLD you to pull over._

"Oh, shut up," she groaned again, leaning against the hot metal of her bashed-in door and sliding down to kneel in the dust--her legs had decided supporting her was too much effort.

John's footsteps crunched toward her, but Grace didn't open her eyes until he grabbed her wrist and yanked her to her feet. He shoved her back against what was left of her car, but, surprisingly, he didn't _slam_ her there. She blinked at him through her bloody hands, more than half-dazed. She expected him to say something--to hit her, at the very least--but he did neither. Instead he stared at her for a long, long moment, at her lacerated forehead and half-focused eyes, and then, incredibly, he laughed.

_You're not the only one who's gone insane_, crazy-Grace mused.

"I didn't think you had _that_ in you," he said, and before she could relax his hand tangled in her hair and he yanked, hard, nearly dragging her back to the (now very dented) truck. "You shouldn't have done that, Grace," he added, shoving her into the truck and slamming the door. He hopped up through the other door, looking at her with frank, if irritated, curiosity. "Why'd you do it?" He still had blood on his own face, she saw, though the wound at his temple had clotted by now. They matched, didn't they?

Grace, leaning against the door, took her hand away from her forehead long enough to wipe it on her jeans. In a wholly unconscious echo of John, she said, "Why not? You gave me an opening, and I took it." She might as well tell him the truth, since she was certain she was in for it no matter what. Why didn't that scare her more? Maybe it was the concussion she almost surely had. It couldn't be that part of her was almost _glad_ she'd been caught again--how could she be, given what he'd likely do to her?

"Whose truck was this?" she asked suddenly, surprising even herself with the question. It was close to new--it hadn't even lost the new-car smell, the strange combination of upholstery and leather and carpet that hadn't had time to have dirt ground into it. There weren't any bloodstains, that she could see, but that didn't mean much. Maybe John dragged whatever poor bastard had owned it out onto the road before he'd stabbed them.

He looked at her, momentarily nonplussed. "Why does it matter?"

Grace shrugged, reaching out to run her fingers over the grey plastic of the dashboard. "It just does."

John echoed her shrug. "Some guy," he said. "Don't really remember." Some cowboy, wasn't it? Ah, whatever. No matter what she said, it wasn't important. He sped down the highway, back to the dirt road, hoping Grace wouldn't try to do anything stupid like jump out of the car. She wouldn't be able to unlock the door, but he didn't need to deal with driving while she struggled.

She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead again and looked at him, curious. "Do you not remember the people you kill?" she asked. "How _weird_ that must be. I'd think you'd have to remember each one. It's not like you ever murder the same person twice."

_Maybe_. Was that her or crazy-Grace? Between the drugs and her head, it was so hard to tell. She _should_ have killed him when she'd run, but she hadn't, and she didn't know why. Moot point now, anyway, she thought.

"Some of 'em." He glanced sidelong at her. "Your boyfriend. _He_ was pretty damn memorable." The only person John had ever ripped in half, certainly, and he'd come up with some pretty creative deaths, in his time.

_He's trying to get a rise out of you,_ crazy-Grace said, deep within her mind.

"I know," Grace murmured in return. She'd shut her eyes, resting her feet on the dashboard. It might have worked, too, but her head hurt, and now that the adrenaline was wearing off she was so _tired. _All she wanted to do was sleep again--even her bloody forehead was ceasing to annoy her, beyond the dull throbbing pain.

John looked at her again. That was a damned peculiar thing to say, but she _had_ just nearly slammed her head straight through her windscreen. "Stay awake," he ordered. "You can't go to sleep with a head injury like that."

"Fuck you," she murmured, curling up against the door.

"No, that's later," he returned, and reached out one hand to yank on her hair again--childish, in a way, but certainly an effective method for making sleep impossible. "Among other things. Stay _awake_."

Even disoriented as she was, Grace knew better than to say _Make me_--you just didn't say something like that to someone like John Ryder, at least if you wanted to remain in one piece. She didn't say 'make me', but she did say, "_Why_? What's in it for me?"

"I won't rip all the hair out of your head," he growled, annoyed. He didn't like driving with one hand, but he'd pull her hair all the way back to the cabin if he had to.

"You wouldn't do that," she said, sleepy and slurring in spite of the everything. "You like my hair too much."

He glared at her. She was right, but that didn't mean he had to dignify her words with a response. All he did was, true to his unspoken word, pull her hair every few minutes until they reached the cabin, forcing her to stay awake no matter how much she grumbled. The very fact that she should grumble was surprising, really--she was still afraid of him, but clearly not so terrified as she had been. He frowned, wondering if he ought to fix that, or if he should leave it be and see what happened with it. If she were some sort of terrified doll, she'd bore the fuck out of him, but he found he didn't altogether like the idea of her ceasing to fear him completely, either. This was where not having a plan was going to cause problems, unfortunately--he didn't know what he wanted from her, and so didn't really know how to handle her now.

The immediate future at least was easy enough. Once they'd pulled into the driveway, he almost literally dragged Grace out of the truck, hauling her inside and dropping her on the couch. Something had to be done about her forehead, before he could consider anything else--damn woman was lucky she hadn't broken her neck. He knew it certainly felt like she'd broken something in his skull, and for that and other reasons he was hardly gentle with the washcloth and antibiotic ointment. At least she didn't need stitches--as interesting an experiment as that might have been, John didn't have the first clue how you actually went about doing them _right_.

She winced as he dabbed at her forehead, which he took as a good thing--it meant she was awake, if nothing else. He didn't really have anything like a bandage, but enough pressure on the wound slowed the bleeding eventually, and he found himself drawing back to look at her. Blood and dust and sweat had contrived to undo all the good her earlier shower had done, and he pulled her to her feet, determined to rectify that state. Grace staggered, but remained standing, and he helped her along into the bathroom. If anything would keep her conscious, it ought to be water--and if he gave her a shower he could ignore the fact that he still didn't know what he was going to do with her.

Grace would not have been surprised to know that John was not a man who made plans. In his line of work, as it were, there was no point; it wasn't as though it required an undue amount of thought. He hitched, some unfortunate bastard picked him up, got themselves killed in rather inventive ways, and then he moved on. He hadn't been lying when he'd told Grace she was the first person he'd ever brought here--she was the first person who'd ever _escaped _him, too. For once he was dealing with the unknown, but he had to think of something fairly quickly.

The current situation, he mused, as he set Grace's bare feet on the linoleum and turned on the shower, couldn't last long. He couldn't stay here and watch her indefinitely, and if he left her she'd surely find some means of escape no matter what he did--she was surprisingly inventive, for a girl of her age and background, and unless he kept her chronically drugged into oblivion she'd bolt the first chance she got. And he certainly didn't want to do that, he mused, somehow managing to pull her T-shirt over her head without dropping her, smacking his head on the curtain-rod, or ripping anything. She tried to fight him, in a dazed, half-hearted way, but by the time he'd got her pants off she'd given up even on that. It was a more worrisome sign than anything else--the only reason she'd quit fighting him would be because there wasn't enough _her _in there to do it.

He ignored his own clothes as he steered her under the showerhead--getting wet wouldn't do them any harm. Her eyes drifted shut as cool water ran down through her hair, over her bloody forehead, trailing pink rivulets down her neck and shoulders. Should he kill her? _Could_ he kill her?

Well, of course he could. John was nothing if not a complete sociopath, and there wasn't really _anything_ he wouldn't do. He could kill her, but he didn't want to--she deserved better than that, this woman who had already once beaten him at his own game.

She deserved a chance.

And he was going to give her one.

That decided, he gave himself over to the task at hand--long rough fingers worked their way through her hair, unknotting its tangles while grime and dust washed away with rusty blood. He'd have to let her sleep soon, and feed her when she woke, and then--well, then they could play.

Grace, who was far too out of it to realize what fresh hell she'd gotten herself into, found herself drifting off into a blessed darkness that held no nightmares, real or otherwise.

Those could be saved for her waking.

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Perpetrator's Note #2: Next chapter will be the last, I think, though just now even I'm not sure how it will end. The only thing I can guarantee is that there will definitely not be a happily ever after. XD


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